1960 Democrat Convention items of JFK, aides

Awards of Outstanding International Importance to Statesmen and Heroines

The JFK and staffers convention badges etc. Archive: aide Troutman in 1960 Campaign

Telephone 773-539-5751
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J.A. Schramek
& Associates

The objects below might not be considered in and of themselves significant enough to warrant presentation on this site, were they to have pertained to lesser figures than John F. Kennedy and some of his key aides.
But since the most important JFK objects are held by the JFK Library in Boston, Mass., USA, and considering the huge historic magnitude of JFK, "third-rate" objects significantly associated with him are arguably equivalent to first-rate objects significantly associated with lesser historical figures.

In the highly regarded book The 100: a ranking of the most influential persons in history by Michael H. Hart, JFK is ranked #80, solely because of his primary responsibility for the lauching of the American goverment's program to send men to the moon, which became a historic success in 1969.

Other aspects of Kennedy's career that warrant special attention to objects significantly associated with him include:
his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which is widely regarded as one of the great occasions of calamity averted by skillful diplomacy, and as a model for the handling of such crises, and

his 1960 campaign for the U.S Presidency, which is considered the first such successful insurgent candidacy, in that never before had a candidate won a Presidential nomination of a major party (and thereafter the November election) without having previously been widely considered by party elders to be Presidential timber. This is to say, he was the first man to succeed in an essentially unilateral run for the Presidency, in his case via his unbroken string of victories in the 1960 Democratic Presidential Primaries, and his subsequent receipt of the Democratic nomination on the first ballot at that party's National Convention.

Previously, Presidential timber required a resume containing one of the following executive or quasi-executive qualifications:
Vice-President; General in the army; Secretary of State, War, or Commerce; Chairman of a major Congressional Committee; or Governor of a fairly major state.

The only exceptions to the above before Kennedy were Abe Lincoln and Warren G. Harding, the administration of the latter being so rocked with scandal that his Presidency has consistently been considered one of the worst in American history; his nomination on the tenth ballot of the 1920 Republican Convention resulted from a famous secret meeting of party elders in a "Smoke-filled Room".
As for Lincoln, his lack of executive or quasi-executive qualifications was all but inevitable for anyone seeking nomination and election as a Republican, since that party was much too new in 1860 for it to have had available the sort of "farm team" (of persons with such qualifications) possessed by most parties in American political history.

Morton Downey (1901 –1985) was a singer popular in the United States, enjoying his greatest success in the 1930s and 1940s. Downey was nicknamed "The Irish Nightingale".
Downey owned a house in Hyannis, Massachusetts next to Joseph P. Kennedy's. This house was used by John F. Kennedy as his summer White House.

Democratic Presidential Nomination
Acceptance Speech: July 1960,
Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles

Cardboard box is 2 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches

Robert Battey Troutman Jr., a lawyer who in the 1960's developed a voluntary approach to opening industrial jobs for blacks, died Tuesday at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. He was 73 years old and lived in Atlanta.

He died of cancer, said a son, W. George Troutman, of Arlington, Va.

Mr. Troutman, a 1942 graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was a roommate of Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., John F. Kennedy's older brother, joined his father's law firm upon graduation but left after a few years to enter his own practice and pursue business ventures.

It was as a member of President Kennedy's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity that he developed the Plans for Progress, a program to induce many of the nation's largest corporations to hire and promote black employees. Despite some initial successes, the effort was sharply criticized by civil-rights groups as a "go slow" approach that ran counter to compulsory measures spelled out in an executive order that prohibited racial discrimination by Government agencies and by companies with Government contracts.

From NY Times, 2 August 1991.

Note Troutman listed as
responsible for: Ala. Ark. and seven other Southern states

Note Troutman listed as responsible for
Arrangements and General Operations

1960 Nonimation Campaign badge and correspondence group to aide Bob Troutman, who was responsible for Southern states and Convention (e.g. delegate) communications

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Telephone 773-539-5751
FAX 773-304-0131
Postal address
P.O. Box 300791, Chicago, IL 60630, USA
Electronic mail buynobel@sbcglobal.net
Prices available upon request.

Eight pages stapled together.

Three pages stapled together.

Six pages stapled together.

40 page booklet,
published 1942

The D.N. Pritt Fighter vs. Fascism Archive